Excellent piece today by Real estate attorney Roy Oppenheim, who writes some of the best stuff on illegal foreclosures by our Banksters.

Quoting:

“When word came out about this so-called “independent” process last year, few bought into it. I certainly never did, and most homeowners knew from the beginning that it lacked any pretense of integrity.

It essentially came out of last year’s $25 billion mortgage settlement, as a way to placate those victimized during the robosigning era. But the banks, if they weren’t in charge, still had their hand in how the program was plotted from the very beginning.

It was never independent, that was the biggest oxymoron if there ever was one. Banks hired the reviewers, who were basically unemployed ex-mortgage brokers; paid the reviewers; in some cases actually provided answers to them.

This program was a contaminated cesspool from the very start. It was unsalvageable, and it was never going to do anything for any true victims of foreclosure.

The irony of course is that the banks, and not the homeowners, were the ones who pulled the trigger. They realized it was better to throw in the towel now than face their own mistakes.

The mistakes they once told us didn’t exist but in fact were so rampant that these reviews were taking too long and costing too much.

As flawed as I suspect the review process was, there must have been enough there that was scaring the banks enough that they felt their best option was to cough up even more cash for homeowners.

Fraud on Fraud is where you commit a second fraud to try to cover up the first. What this latest settlement tries to do is cover up the flaws of the first settlement. So what we essentially have here is settlement on settlement.

Better for them to throw money at us than face the harsh light of day. The banks recognized it was going to be too expensive and too unwieldy for them to go through with these reviews.

So yes, many of their mistakes will stay locked behind the vault, away from prying eyes, just where the servicers want them to stay.”